When moving images are cued up by a video playback apparatus in order to play back and edit the moving images, a target image at the head of the moving images to be played back is outputted. Here, “cue up” is, in general, intended to mean an operation to cue an image at the start of a plurality of images to be played back in preparation for the playback. In the case that, images of, for example, a sports game, news, a concert, or surveillance areas, are recorded, a plurality of images recorded at different positions tend to be similar to the target image to be cued up, and thus, an operator operating the video playback apparatus cannot ascertain that the outputted image is truly the desired image at the head of the moving images to be replayed, especially in the case of simultaneous report when the played back images are televised without modification.
In such a case, it is required to play back the cued-up video image and video images following it again in order to check if the cued-up video image is the desired image at the head of the moving images to be played back or not.
However, it takes unnecessary labor and time to play back and view the moving images using a preview function and it is difficult to detect and play back the desired image on a timely basis. Although the moving images could be played back and previewed at a speed higher than a normal speed, so as to reduce the time necessary to preview the moving images, the visibility of the images deteriorates as the playback speed become higher. A playback apparatus which can enhance the visibility of images during the high-speed playback operation and facilitate the detection of the desired image is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. H08-70430 and the like. The playback apparatus disclosed in the above-mentioned publication is designed to cue up the desired image in such a manner that the display screen is divided into a plurality of sub-screens and a plurality of images are sequentially displayed in respective sub-screens when a plurality of images are played back at a high speed, thereby enhancing the visibility of the images.
The playback apparatus disclosed in the above-mentioned publication is adapted to display a plurality of images in a plurality of sub-screens after extracting images from once recorded images and reducing them in data size by repeatedly executing a track jump operation. Hence, a drawback is encountered in that the moving images cannot be played back (replayed) in real time while they are being recorded over a long time, as in the case of, for example, sports broadcasting, or the like. Here, the track jump operation is intended to mean an operation of moving a data reading means such as, for example, an optical head radially inwardly or outwardly by one or more tracks on a storage media such as, for example, an optical disc while the optical head is reading data stored in the optical disc. Further, the playback apparatus disclosed in the above-mentioned publication is required to read all of the recorded images once in order to search the desired image, thereby increasing the processing time. In addition, the above-mentioned playback apparatus may lose the chance of replaying images worth replaying, because images are extracted by executing the track jump operation, and accordingly, some images may not be displayed in any one of the sub-screens.